“The Prince Title” to Descendants of Bukeev Horde Khan Dzhangir

Abstract

At the beginning of the 19th century tsarist government divided the Kazakh steppe territory into regions such the Siberian Kazakhs, Kazakhs of the Orenburg department and the Bukeev khanate. In each of these regions the imperial government developed political system distinctive from the other, but with the similar purpose is to make their ruling closer to imperial structure. Differences in political system in these regions built distinctive features also in social transformation of these territories. Yet if regional political transformations of the Kazakh steppe in the 19th century have been the object of historical investigation, then problem of social change in this region at the time remains largely unstudied. This essay represents an attempt to fill this designated lack. The research work investigates features of transforming process from traditional nomadic social structure to imperial order on the example of one region of the Kazakh steppe, namely the Bukeev khanate. The Bukeevs khanate differed from other regions of the Steppe because was created as special ethno political territory of Kazakh nomads with certain administrative borders between Volga-Ural where the rule of a khan preserved till 1845. Moreover, descendants Dzhangir khan (the last khan of Bukeev khanate) could enter into the titled Russian nobility that was uncharacteristic for the nomadic aristocracy of other Steppe region. Thus the purpose of article is to study the process of entry of the Kazakh aristocracy into the privileged estate of the empire and its social adaptation to imperial conditions, on the example of the Dzhangirov khan family who turned from candidates of a khan title into princes of the Russian Empire. The presented research is based on the material documents taken from the central archives of Russia and Kazakhstan most of which are new in historical science. The specifics of this essay are that it on the basis of methods of a historical personality conducts the research through sociocultural measurement of biographies of the titled Kazakh noblemen khan Dzhangir’s family who realized themselves in the period of the 19th century in space of the Russian Empire as in local ruling, and also on service in other parts of the empire is conducted.